A thought-provoking story of one boy playing his own game of life.
An urban Native American boy’s gripping survival story.
In this complex and emotionally resonant novel, Opin lives in a car, enduring unpredictable days as his family struggles. Opin’s mother guides Opin and his brother, Emjay, to live life as a game, even though their battle with being unhoused seems unwinnable. They move constantly to avoid “the cavalry”—or Child Protective Services—as they search for money, food, and a forever home. Opin’s mother insists that he “keep an active mind.” He hunts down science facts and learns all his school subjects from library books. His mother teaches him Ojibwe words from her grandmother’s handwritten notebook. She teaches him reciprocity, only taking what they need to survive, and street smarts. Opin and his new friend, a Black boy from the shelter they move to in Stockton, are attacked by racist teenagers. The storytelling is superlative, but some of the phrases and descriptions—for example, “metal pony” for shopping cart, “buffalo hunt” for stealing food—feel reminiscent of Native tropes, despite seeming to be intended to show Opin’s feelings of connection to his heritage. Some scenes would have benefited from more context: Opin’s mother, who performs her own version of Ojibwe dancing for money, rebuts a passerby’s criticism that she’s “exploiting our dying Native American culture.” Rather than critiquing the framing of Indigenous cultures as “dying,” she says that she’s “reviving our culture.” But do vibrant contemporary Indigenous ways of life need to be revived? Still, Bird seamlessly weaves in historical events, like the government’s distribution of smallpox-infested blankets to kill Native people, while telling a story of admirable resilience.
A thought-provoking story of one boy playing his own game of life. (song list, Ojibwe glossary, author’s note) (Fiction. 11-14)Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781250877628
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Review Posted Online: Aug. 26, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic.
Chainani works an elaborate sea change akin to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked (1995), though he leaves the waters muddied.
Every four years, two children, one regarded as particularly nice and the other particularly nasty, are snatched from the village of Gavaldon by the shadowy School Master to attend the divided titular school. Those who survive to graduate become major or minor characters in fairy tales. When it happens to sweet, Disney princess–like Sophie and her friend Agatha, plain of features, sour of disposition and low of self-esteem, they are both horrified to discover that they’ve been dropped not where they expect but at Evil and at Good respectively. Gradually—too gradually, as the author strings out hundreds of pages of Hogwarts-style pranks, classroom mishaps and competitions both academic and romantic—it becomes clear that the placement wasn’t a mistake at all. Growing into their true natures amid revelations and marked physical changes, the two spark escalating rivalry between the wings of the school. This leads up to a vicious climactic fight that sees Good and Evil repeatedly switching sides. At this point, readers are likely to feel suddenly left behind, as, thanks to summary deus ex machina resolutions, everything turns out swell(ish).
Rich and strange (and kitted out with an eye-catching cover), but stronger in the set pieces than the internal logic. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: May 14, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-06-210489-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2013
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Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and...
Good has won every fairy-tale contest with Evil for centuries, but a dark sorcerer’s scheme to turn the tables comes to fruition in this ponderous closer.
Broadening conflict swirls around frenemies Agatha and Sophie as the latter joins rejuvenated School Master Rafal, who has dispatched an army of villains from Capt. Hook to various evil stepmothers to take stabs (literally) at changing the ends of their stories. Meanwhile, amid a general slaughter of dwarves and billy goats, Agatha and her rigid but educable true love, Tedros, flee for protection to the League of Thirteen. This turns out to be a company of geriatric versions of characters, from Hansel and Gretel (in wheelchairs) to fat and shrewish Cinderella, led by an enigmatic Merlin. As the tale moves slowly toward climactic battles and choices, Chainani further lightens the load by stuffing it with memes ranging from a magic ring that must be destroyed and a “maleficent” gown for Sophie to this oddly familiar line: “Of all the tales in all the kingdoms in all the Woods, you had to walk into mine.” Rafal’s plan turns out to be an attempt to prove that love can be twisted into an instrument of Evil. Though the proposition eventually founders on the twin rocks of true friendship and family ties, talk of “balance” in the aftermath at least promises to give Evil a fighting chance in future fairy tales. Bruno’s polished vignettes at each chapter’s head and elsewhere add sophisticated visual notes.
Ultimately more than a little full of itself, but well-stocked with big themes, inventively spun fairy-tale tropes, and flashes of hilarity. (Fantasy. 11-13)Pub Date: July 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-210495-3
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
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